Quorum Mobile has a huge update, and a surprise: farcaster spaces are fully supported, but with one big feature the neynar app doesn't have.
When our feedback is ignored that other clients are treated as second class citizens and only get to have "listen only access" to spaces, I won't stand for it. Thus, join and create spaces, including with video. 🫰🫰
"Choose a side": create a hypersnap signer directly, that pursues the middle ground I spoke of previously – it doesn't identify you as a Quorum user, and increases your $SNAP earnings.
Now on Testflight, Google Play Beta, and sideload for android: https://releases.quilibrium.com/qm-2.1.0-35.apk
Please share feedback, we're happy to address it.
Something was said on the community call today by neynar team that didn't sit right with me, and it shouldn't sit right with you either. They asked me why I am pushing for a hypersnap node to be a validator, why not just fork? And when I said I'd answer it in three points, before I could even complete the first point, I was interrupted repeatedly, and they attempted a gotcha question, which failed, but I'd like to clear the air of the misinformation at play.
The first point was: our goal is to help farcaster grow. Part of that, is that clients cannot today meaningfully use snapchain to build a client. You need an indexer, or you have to pay a service provider, like neynar, to be that indexer. Before I could elaborate further, or get to the other two points, they attempted to "gotcha" me by saying "but quorum isn't using hypersnap apis, it's using the merkle apis". This is not true. We use both. And to prove that, we have updated the public source of the Quorum implementation so you can see for yourself: https://github.com/quilibriumnetwork/quorum-shared (this contains the hypersnap and merkle api usage) https://github.com/quilibriumnetwork/quorum-mobile (the mobile app)
And if they would have let me finished instead of trying to railroad me, I would have clarified completely. We use merkle apis for farcaster dms, because they're not on protocol. We use merkle apis for importing user wallets, because they're using a proprietary setup with privy. We use merkle apis for channel info, because this doesn't live on protocol either. And, we have failover for everything else, because there's no sense in ruining user experience if something goes wrong.
But point two, which I was able to briefly allude to in the call, is that Quorum is a _privacy-focused_ client. This means that we give a shit about user safety. This means: no analytics, every possible measure to never even see user data, and enhanced features like E2EE DMs, group chats (which _don't_ interface with merkle apis), voice and video calls, a privacy-preserving wallet api, and a few other important details. But I want to focus on one of the smaller details, because that was part of their attempted gotcha - the use of merkle signers. Clients have an app identifier, in the form of an FID. This FID indicates, whenever you post, where your post came from. It's how the "sent from base app" appeared under posts, and it's how we identified the attacks came from schedly being exploited months ago.
Quorum doesn't have an app FID, because people who seek out privacy apps are in many countries, identified as a risk, and in some countries in particular, literally get murdered over it. By using the merkle signer, it _hides_ the fact the user is using Quorum. I have mentioned this many times before, but either they forgot or thought they could somehow use it to imply something else. That said, as now snapchain and hypersnap have the new signer FIP, there's a middle road, where users can create signers of their own, on protocol, and it indicates nothing. Some users may still have high caution and concern, so like all of our features, we give the user a choice to opt in to this, despite the low risk, rather than simply choose that path for them. If they choose not to opt in, then they continue using merkle signers.
Before I could get any further, I was again derailed. So finally, point three: Being a validator is a commitment – one we take so seriously, that I was the first who even proposed running a separate validator outside of _Merkle and Neynar's ownership_ (this was proposed prior to the acquisition). We want to see farcaster succeed together, and by making that commitment, we are handcuffing ourselves to compatibility. And after some handwaving about variables that they couldn't actually prove or disprove, a point was made – if they are willing to trial things out on testnet with _regular_ snapchain nodes, then there should be _ZERO_ objection to trialing things on testnet with a hypersnap node as a peer. There was no formal commitment to accepting this, merely verbal, and I await them explicitly agreeing to do so before spending the money to run a testnet node to verify what I already know – we are compatible and there are zero latency implications as a validator running hypersnap when communicating with snapchain.
But they have to meet us halfway. They have to actually extend the hand and commit to do this with us. And a good start would be to stop treating the one remaining original dev of snapchain like shit just because she disagrees and argues against claims that are not backed by evidence.
The ball's in their court, but you can see for yourself that they are not being honest. Timestamp 47:27 for context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fJIJceE2R4
Gonna be real clear about something. We caught a number of Sybil rings after the first round. You can tell me all you want that "your friend helped you". But the reality is, one wallet collected three, four, seven, thirty different accounts — and you got caught.
This is functionally equivalent to saying you gave your friend your seed phrase. If you do that, you're being dumb, and more likely, you're lying.
So making this a simple call to action: you claim on multiple FIDs with the same wallet, you're feeding our Sybil detection algorithm. There will not be a second post about this.
I have received an ungodly amount of messages due to the latest retro calc, so I’m going to make a few things clear about how it works:
1. Transfers of fids resets age of the account — account recovery is one of those things that does this. Account recoveries are not public, it is something neynar can do, but the info around this is not published, so we cannot distinguish an account sale vs recovery. Take it up with them.
2. We did find that there were some metrics that were not good, that is being adjusted, and our finalized calculation is being published today.
3. We spent the past few weeks absolutely grinding through blatant airdrop farmer networks. Some of the individuals involved in that make up a good portion of the people complaining at me. Good. You don't help farcaster, you're only there to help yourself, and you got caught. We now have the best spam detection algo on the platform. Good luck going forward with your bullshit.
4. For those who were not farmers but disappeared from results, it likely was due to the first or second items. We have independently confirmed cases of both, the latter of which is fixed in the final results, the former, we cannot fix unless neynar wants to make visible account recovery data.
Hi folks! If you've been testing Quorum Mobile, the Testflight has finally been (re)approved, you can install the update through testflight if you already had it before, and if not: https://testflight.apple.com/join/PPzryGCU
Android onboarding is still via google play beta (DM me your email address) and sideloading via https://releases.quilibrium.com/qm-2.1.0-16.apk
We expect there will be a lot of imitators via clanker and also outright scams (we're already seeing brand new accounts spamming an airdrop claim tool)
Here's what you need to know:
- it won't be done via clanker (for those who have been keeping up with development, this is obvious, but it needs to be said)
- there is no "airdrop", it's protocol rewards based on activity (among also rewards for app devs and protocol node runners), but there are retroactive rewards based on the same rules that apply going forward. Details here: https://github.com/orgs/farcasterorg/discussions/19
- @mvr's frame (wish it didn't say airdrop but it is what it is) reflects the current state of the retro calculation, however, this is not set in stone and, as I've asked folks before, we need your input! (see link above)
farcaster classic is not launching a token.
the token talk circulating right now is tied to hypersnap, a fork of snapchain, both participants of the farcaster protocol. the hypersnap team has been referring to the token as a farcaster token, because it is a farcaster token. understandably, this has caused confusion, because neynar refers only to their side of the fork as farcaster, and yet they have none of the original protocol dev team.
to reduce confusion, when we say "farcaster" we mean the ecosystem and protocol. when we say "farcaster classic", we mean the side of the fork neynar maintains.
consider the history of eth and eth classic, and this POV will make sense.
farcaster token is coming this month. 🫡
Thanks to all who attended the token call – we have put up meeting notes, discussing motivations and proposals for tokenizing the protocol.
High level items:
- urgency with current world state
- fastest path to release
- ensuring a cryptoeconomic model that incentivizes farcaster nodes, farcaster users, and farcaster client and miniapp developers
- some proposals involve retroactive rewards to users
View all proposals and discussion items here: https://github.com/orgs/farcasterorg/discussions/20
We will want to move quickly, so please please please make sure you lend your commentary to this discussion (and the linked proposals).
Congrats to @dwr and @v
Condolences to @manan and @rish who will now be the lucky recipients of more snapchain FIPs and PRs from me
Kidding, congrats to all.
But you're still getting my PRs 😉
Hi folks,
Yesterday, we had a meeting with teams across the FC ecosystem: client developers, mini app developers, and other kinds of builders and creators. The key things we wanted to learn – what makes using snapchain hard? What about the broader FC eco is broken? How can we help?
Here's the summary of the meeting, the next big bets to make on Hypersnap & Quorum, and how you can help: https://docs.fileverse.io/0x5cBbA35A46F3fbf25A95AB8cc6bb367CC08a30F9/1#key=9zfIi7kMa1NdSZjA1FG03U4XEn2kgs7JXO5of6dqvl2F1jL-Jrj_3vXVUwfo7vrk
Hypersnap's first draft: https://github.com/QuilibriumNetwork/hypersnap/pull/1
We're going to be meeting with builders across the farcaster ecosystem to help enhance the protocol in ways that make it easier than ever to build clients, mini apps, and more.
Happy new year!
2025 has been one hell of a year to dig deep and throw everything at building. And that I did.
So we started things off today by starting the rollout of invites to the Quorum Mobile beta.
https://farcaster.xyz/cassie/0x9dc92c9a
In half a day, these three FIPs rapidly climbed to be some of the highest voted FIPs in farcaster history:
https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol/discussions/256
https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol/discussions/257
https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol/discussions/258
257 is now #2 in all time.
Guess there is a fifth option in influencing the direction of farcaster
hope y'all know what team you're on
and if you haven't yet, better take care of your onboarding before tomorrow
https://farcaster.xyz/miniapps/tFX1m7IyozRk/hexmas
Hi Farcasters,
It's been a minute, hasn't it? Some of y'all have tagged me in posts, wondering where I'd been. What happened?
We've been cooking. The team at Quilibrium has been hard at work in building out that future I've been talking about, and you're about to be in it, whether you're an ETH maxi, enlightened $wQUIL champion, or a nocoin enjoyer. So I've come back to show you what that all means.
Let's start with Q. After many, many long nights, the sacrifices have come to a fore, as the long-awaited 2.1 is undergoing the final battle testing to ensure the upgrade continues without a hitch. A massive parallel network, with secure computation at the core. A place where the cypherpunk dreamers don't have to sacrifice their privacy, or performance, or cobble together broken solutions to launch groundbreaking applications. A platform where all communication is private by default – where it is harder to break a user's privacy than to do the right thing and protect it.
But hard tech is hard, and even with guardrails baked in for coders, it's still a learning curve. How are we overcoming this? By building out the paved roads of common technologies builders already use every day, so switching over is a matter of creating an account, and running a few commands. The first of these products are our S3-compatible API, and KMS-compatible API. Many more will follow in the coming months.
But privacy tech is expensive! Or is it? We've opted for highly efficient cryptography purpose-built for developer needs instead of researcher dreams. The consequence: our prices undercut Amazon Web Services.
We've spent so much time and energy building a new protocol meant to make the internet work better for its users, and we can't wait for you to be using it too.
But we haven't stopped there.
The reason I draw parallels to the hobby computer industry is because the same kind of niche user base exists: people who are willing to put up with super leaky abstractions, exposed wires and rough edges, to make a spreadsheet or draw a circle. Much like Apple's vision of the "bicycle for the mind" of personal computing, crypto needs its own story to tell. And money isn't compelling enough, that's just an application. If you were to distill the unique attributes of crypto, and then amplify that sole distillation into a single message, as what is the ultimate purpose of crypto? You would say that it gives you autonomy, freedom to move, to interact across borders, with a unified store of trust. If personal computers took off because they were the "bicycle for the mind", crypto will take off as the "passport for the mind"
Shipped this week on /quilibrium:
- Initial release of public beta of Quorum, our E2EE and P2P alternative to Discord (why Q was originally built in the first place!)
- Probably the reason you saw a bunch of casts with a long string of letters starting with Qm
- Launched with one of my favorite ads I've made so far: https://x.com/QuilibriumInc/status/1871465836789346539
- Milestone 2/3 next up for testnet, though Quorum is already testing some of this now
we had more active users in the first hour of launching Quorum than some apps have after their "$31m strategic funding round" years into their project being live
make it make sense
Years ago, when I started building a decentralized discord clone, people asked me why. I wanted a communication tool that was truly decentralized, in a way that no state actor was able to gain control over.
Signal's design wasn't capable of group chats beyond a certain size. The features only went so far. And it has failure points such that countries block them by firewall and have to rely on the good graces of others to run proxies, which ultimately get shut down or blocked too.
App stores do not share in this ideal — their concern is profit, and will bend backwards when forced to by regulatory bodies.
Amazon and others are complicit in helping state actors maintain their control of the web, and are profiting handsomely from the arrangement.
None of this happened by accident. And I only saw it getting worse. I realized what I was building in this chat application went beyond just chat, and how pressing it was to make this general purpose.
When I joined Farcaster, I was neither an employee of Merkle nor did I know Dan or Varun. Varun finally got me to onboard after multiple attempts, conversations lead to what I could do for the project, and I became a part of the team. I may not always agree with every decision, but I can definitely confirm firsthand there is no "help Merkle's friends" bias, and for those who know why I quit CB, they'd know just as well I wouldn't stick around at Merkle if that were the case.
this week at /quilibrium (posting early because my weekend is going to be on full lockdown mode getting this upgrade completed)
- exhaustive prep work for 2.0 upgrade (our launch steps starting tonight can be found here https://quilibrium.discourse.group/t/psa-2-0-launch-steps/486?u=cassie)
- onboarded a bunch of new bootstrap peers for 2.0 (and said goodbye to some that needed to shut down as a bootstrap ❤️)
- deep docs for last week's RPCs https://quilibrium.com/docs/rpc
Cassie-chan's so baka, she thinks VCs actually care about her projects uwu~ Maybe if I add more buzzwords, senpai will notice me!
Create a Waifu based off your FC profile with WaifuCast!
i need a burn unit 😂
I have a groupchat experiment I would like to conduct. The first 64 people who comment on this post will be added (if you're following me). At the end of 24 hours of the commencement, everyone will vote for someone else to be removed. You cannot vote for yourself. The 32 users with the highest votes will be removed 1/2
